[Review - Game] Borderlands [PC]

Borderlands

Rating:

Borderlands was a game that I managed to ignore for quite a while. Mostly it was because my PC at the time wasn’t capable of running it to my satisfaction and for some reason despite how much I had heard about Borderlands the idea of the game just didn’t click with me. To be completely honest, I didn’t really look into it too much, so it’s my fault. Long story short: I got bored enough to grab a copy and man, oh man, was I surprised! I managed to play it enough that I convinced a few of my friends and most of my room-mates to give it a try. If you’ve never played just imagine it this way: FPS Diablo 2 minus the Demons add a futuristic western setting and you’re good to go.
I gave this game a 4 stars out of 5 because even though it’s flaws were few, they were big enough to warrant a large mark against the overall game-play.
Check out my Review below.

Pros:

• Graphics – This game is visually amazing. The cutscene style, the cel-shading, it all comes together so smooth. Funny enough the cel-shading style was apparently an accident but after they saw it they turned it from a bug into a feature. Go figure
• Gameplay – The Gameplay was fantastic. When people compared this game to a modern day fps in the style of a dungeon crawler, they weren’t kidding. If you love loot, this game has tons of it, randomly generated and the game world is massive.
• Loot – Did I mention the copious amounts of loot? Randomly generated oh so sweet loot? Piles and piles of upgrades…mmm loot.
• Single-player is Multi-player

More about multi-player below, but just know that characters you make in single-player can be used it multi-player and then used in single-player again with no side effects. Play with friends, continue alone, play with friends some more. This was amazingly fun for those late-night sessions.

• Multiplayer – The ability to play with friends or random people across the internet. Fantastic! You help friends out with their missions, they help you with yours, and you can uncover the main storyline together! CO-OP at it’s finest! Hearing your character nag your friends when you revive them, brag about new loot, and various things like that really bring life to the game. Not to mention the fact that the bigger the party, the tougher the enemies, the better the loot and the more XP you get! BRING IT ON!
• Addiciting – If you love games like Diablo 2 and have a single FPS loving bone in your body, this game will capture your soul and not release it until you’ve beat it at least once.
• New Game + – Yep, that’s right, New Game +. Once you finish the game, you can start all over again, choosing to toss around in either Playthrough 1 or 2. 1 Being the game you just came from and 2 being a new game where you start with the junk you have now, at your level, with all your skills, and the enemies start around level 30 something and advance from there. I’ll admit I didn’t give Playthrough 2 much of a go because I was still enjoying the DLC and trying to get to 60 before I started it. (A feat I’ve still never accomplished, so far I’ve made it to level 58.)
• DLC – I thought the DLC for this game, when I first heard about it, was pretty campy. An Arena, A zombie island, and an ‘after end-game’ storyish expansion didn’t sound all that hot, but boy was I wrong. Each of these are quipped about below:
  • Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot – You start with 3 arenas, having to survive 5 rounds, each round consisting of 5 waves. Once you finish that, you have 3 more arenas to finish, each with 20 rounds of 5 waves per. Yeah, that’s a lot. No? Did I mention you have to finish every round before you get credit for the arena? And that every 5th wave is a boss fight? Yeah…tough. This expansion adds a BANK to the game, something that’s INSANELY useful before you could ever even attempt to finish the DLC. Just buy it because of the bank alone. There’s also the chance to win a few skill points and about 5 achievements I think, nothing as good as the bank though.
  • The Zombie Island of Doctor Ned – Nothing as crazy as a bank here just good wholesome campy b-movie parody zombie-slaying fun. The comedy in this expansion makes it worth it. Get some guns and go nuts. IF you have time or patience to really examine the backstory, it’s pretty neat too.
  • The Secret Armory of General Knoxx – Again, nothing as crazy as a bank but the story itself is pretty entertaining and the comedy is almost as good as Ned’s. You get to ride around in new vehicles, experience a few new game mechanics, discover one of the best loot-giving bosses in the game (if you’re willing to side-quest and search), and if you finish the story, you’re able to access what so many people thought was a flaw of the single player game…..not having a huge, massive, armory to loot. Did I mention this game has lots of loot? With this expansion it has even more! CON – Expect a lot of driving. I mean it…a lot. It gets irritating.

Cons:

• Multi-player Connectivity – I know people who have never had issues with lag or connectivity in this game. I also know people who have had nothing but trouble. A problem like this is a complete game-breaker. It uses Gamespy’s system for multi-player stuffs and even with ports forwarded some players are still plagued with issues. I’ve had my own share of lag on LAN games that even after troubleshooting didn’t clear up fully, while my net games have been above-par. (Before you wonder, I’m well versed in tech-support goodness so my network wasn’t very much to fault. I just forwarded ports instead of letting uPnP take care of it.)
• Late Fast Travel – Imagine the surprise when you find out about a fast travel ability, that the game doesn’t unlock until WAY after you could have used the damn thing. I have no idea why the designers/developers didn’t make this something you earn earlier on, but most people well out of ‘newbie’ mode by the time they rock the quest that unlocks this. Story wise, it’s solid, but I agree that it should be available a bit earlier on.
• Character Story – I’m not one to care too much, but I did have passing thoughts about my character’s past. You have these distinctly separate people who obviously have different lives and motivation but no word of it is Ever mentioned in game. You can tell that so much thought was given to the game world and some of the side quests really prove this, but as far as your character goes, there’s nothing. The only tid-bits I was able to find out were in various developer quoted sources online or the manual.
• Lack of Vehicle Choices – Not everyone may agree with this, and like a few of the above items it’s not exactly a game-breaker, but come on! As much depth as this game had and we only had 1 car without resorting to a single DLC campaign? ONE car? And the damn thing doesn’t even fit 3 or 4 people, just two. What if you and 2 friends want to play? Have fun trying to follow the other two blokes around. The Knoxx campaign fixed this but the cars are only usable there and the only 4 seater is absolute trash. The weapons are nice and all but it’s a friggin cube on wheels.
• Hacking – Since this game allows you to play with your single-player character in multi-player at any time it was only a matter of time until someone found out how to mod it. There are tools out there that let you tweak the hell out of everything about your character, including their equipment and money. Thankfully most people who play online are against this but there are those rare few who just exploit it to hell and back. Maybe a fix could be worked out but anything short of a company owned character server wouldn’t hold water, and even that would kill the ability to cross the characters from single to multi play. Guess we just have to live with this.

Like I said above, this game would be 5 out of 5 if they’d just fix the network issues. The little things would be a plus but networking is important in a game like this. It wouldn’t have the same effect or be the same game if I was limited to single player.